Shiny Entertainment founder forms new company

Dave Perry, industry veteran and founder of Atari's Shiny Entertainment development studio has founded a new consultancy company that will aim to facilitate penetration of the US market.

GameConsultants.com will provide advice and support for investors, hardware manufacturers, foreign development teams and publishers looking to secure funding and create a presence in the US interactive entertainment market, with additional services including game prototype and development team capacity reviews.

The company will be led by Perry, who resigned from Shiny Entertainment earlier in the year following the news that struggling publisher Atari would be selling off its internal development studios.

Having founded the studio in 1993 and successfully negotiated its sale to Infogrames for USD 47 million in 2002, Perry stated that his reason for resigning from the company - responsible for the Earthworm Jim series and Atari's commercially successful Enter the Matrix game - was to better facilitate a deal for the studio's sale.

Atari announced during E3 last week that it had secured the license for the creation of "next-generation handheld and online systems" games in the Earthworm Jim series, although there has been no confirmation on whether or not Shiny will be handling development on the new titles.